Magnetic-Island Contraction and Particle Acceleration in Simulated Eruptive Solar Flares

The mechanism that accelerates particles to the energies required to produce the observed high-energy impulsive emission in solar flares is not well understood. Drake et al. (2006) proposed a mechanism for accelerating electrons in contracting magnetic islands formed by kinetic reconnection in multi-layered current sheets. We apply these ideas to sunward-moving flux ropes (2.5D magnetic islands) formed during fast reconnection in a simulated eruptive flare. A simple analytic model is used to calculate the energy gain of particles orbiting the field lines of the contracting magnetic islands in our ultrahigh-resolution 2.5D numerical simulation. We find that the estimated energy gains in a single island range up to a factor of five. This is higher than that found by Drake et al. for islands in the terrestrial magnetosphere and at the heliopause, due to strong plasma compression that occurs at the flare current sheet. In order to increase their energy by two orders of magnitude and plausibly account for the observed high-energy flare emission, the electrons must visit multiple contracting islands. This mechanism should produce sporadic emission because island formation is intermittent. Moreover, a large number of particles could be accelerated in each magnetohydrodynamic-scale island, which may explain the inferred rates of energetic-electron production in flares. We conclude that island contraction in the flare current sheet is a promising candidate for electron acceleration in solar eruptions.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal (2016

Ce-catalyzed oxidation of Ta(110)

Photoemission spectroscopy was used to investigate the initial oxidation of the Ce/Ta(110) interface at room temperature. The oxidation of Ta(110) is dramatically enhanced by a thin Ce overlayer. A Ta suboxide TaOχ (0.5≤χ≤1) is formed first in the interface, followed by the rapid formation of Ta2O5 upon further oxygen exposure. A weak interface reaction exists in Ce/Ta(110), but is excluded as the main cause of the catalytic oxidation. An earlier suggestion is reconfirmed that the Ce layer converts O2 to oxygen ions and thus promotes the oxidation of the substrate

Nuclear isotope thermometry

We discuss different aspects which could influence temperatures deduced from experimental isotopic yields in the multifragmentation process. It is shown that fluctuations due to the finite size of the system and distortions due to the decay of hot primary fragments conspire to blur the temperature determination in multifragmentation reactions. These facts suggest that caloric curves obtained through isotope thermometers, which were taken as evidence for a first-order phase transition in nuclear matter, should be investigated very carefully.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

Neutron spectroscopic factors of Ni isotopes from transfer reactions

177 neutron spectroscopic factors for nickel isotopes have been extracted by performing a systematic analysis of the angular distributions measured from (d,p) transfer reactions. A subset of the extracted spectroscopic factors are compared to predictions of large-basis shell models in the full pf model space using the GXPF1A effective interaction, and the (f5/2, p3/2, p1/2, g9/2) model space using the JJ4PNA interaction. For ground states, the predicted spectroscopic factors using the GXPF1A effective interaction in the full pf model space agree very well with the experimental values, while predictions based on several other effective interactions and model spaces are about 30% higher than the experimental values. For low-energy excited states (<3.5 MeV), the agreement between the extracted spectroscopic factors and shell model calculations is not better than a factor of two.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables. accepted for publication in PR

Photoemission study of Au on a-Si:H

We report a high-resolution photoemission study of Au evaporated on rf-sputtered a-Si:H at room temperature. Three regions of coverage can be classified according to the behavior of the valence-band and core-level spectra: an unreacted region with an equivalent thickness of 2 Å, followed by an intermixed Au/a-Si overlayer (∼9 Å), and a dual-phase region at higher coverage. Au adatoms are dispersed in the unreacted region. They subsequently cluster in the intermixed region, where they attach to Si atoms that are not hydrogen bonded, suggesting that the intermixed Si is mainly from those that have dangling bonds. In the dual-phase region, two sets of Au 4f core levels evolve with higher binding energy, one from Au intermixed with Si, and the lower one exhibiting pure gold character. The interface eventually ends up with the sequence: a-Si:H(sub.)+(pure Au mixed with intermixed Au/Si)+(vac). This is unlike the case of Au on c-Si, which has a pure gold layer sandwiched by intermixed Au/Si complexes along the surface normal. Traces of silicon atoms on top of composite surfaces appear even at the highest coverage, 205 Å, of the gold deposit. The applicability of the four models previously used for the Au/c-Si interface is also briefly discussed

Normative Alethic Pluralism

Some philosophers have argued that truth is a norm of judgement and have provided a variety of formulations of this general thesis. In this paper, I shall side with these philosophers and assume that truth is a norm of judgement. What I am primarily interested in here are two core questions concerning the judgement-truth norm: (i) what are the normative relationships between truth and judgement? And (ii) do these relationships vary or are they constant? I argue for a pluralist picture—what I call Normative Alethic Pluralism (NAP)—according to which (i) there is more than one correct judgement-truth norm and (ii) the normative relationships between truth and judgement vary in relation to the subject matter of the judgement. By means of a comparative analysis of disagreement in three areas of the evaluative domain—refined aesthetics, basic taste and morality—I show that there is an important variability in the normative significance of disagreement—I call this the variability conjecture. By presenting a variation of Lynch’s scope problem for alethic monism, I argue that a monistic approach to the normative function of truth is unable to vindicate the conjecture. I then argue that normative alethic pluralism provides us with a promising model to account for it